Yesterday on a bus, I went past an office building with ‘SEO’ on its windows. It had a few other web-based keywords up there as well, possibly in the hope of getting a jump on advertising on Google Earth, so I don’t think it could have been the innocent offices of a firm called South Eastern Origami or similar. It’s a few doors down from where I once went on a ‘Stress Course’ where the organisers seemed to have misunderstood their remit and thought ‘People go on a car maintenance course, they want to come away with a bit of car maintenance under their belts, right? So here we are running a stress course, let’s send these people away loaded up with stress! Go team us! Woooo!’ so the area has previous when it comes to scum and villainy.
I keep wondering whether if I dress up as a ninja and creep in there late at night, I can find whoever’s behind the patronising ‘You MUST do this, this and this to improve your SEO! Watch our video!’ spam I keep getting and make them stop it.
Seriously, I know most of the spam I get comes from offshore digital sweatshops I can’t do anything about, but there’s something about the scolding tone of the SEO spam that makes me think it might well be based out here in the South West of England. I imagine a slightly fussy retired primary school teacher sitting in there, primly upright at her laptop keyboard, telling people she’s never met what they MUST do. Maybe her name’s Florence, but no one ever calls her that. It’s always Miss Fusspot. And she is overdue for meeting an explanatory ninja.
In other news, I’m still getting people coming to my website on odd search terms, including ‘steampunk goat stories’. I regret that I have no steampunk goat stories, searcher, and wish you luck on your continuing quest.
Ankaret Wells 